| What are wills | |
| What is a will? | |
| The written document which specifies what is to happen to a person's belongings when they die. The testator is the person who made the will. | |
| Why have people been writing wills for many, many years? | |
| So that, as William Blatcher put it in 1613 "those transitory goods which god hath blessed me with may be peaceably enjoyed after my decease by those I so decree". | |
| When was a will written? | |
| Generally when the testator was "impotent and aged" or thought to be dying from ill health. The will of William, above, was written on 11th November and he was buried on 4th December at the age of only forty-nine. But the man who was impotent and aged in January 1585 lived for another year. Younger testators might live for many years after writing their will and sometimes alterations were made to the original rather than have a new will written. Sometimes a testator revokes all previous wills, implying that this was not the first will they had written. | |
| Who wrote the will? | |
| Sometimes the vicar or curate of the parish. Most villages would have had someone who could write and the phrases to be used would be known even to those who could not write as wills were often witnessed by a number of relatives and neighbours in whose presence the will would be read. By at least the end of the sixteenth century, there were professional writers (sometimes called scriptors) who must have travelled to neighbouring villages as their services were needed. The scriptor would make notes of the testator's wishes and then go away and write the will, adding the various conventional phrases. He would then bring it back to the testator where the witnesses would have gathered. | |
| What happened after the death of the testator? | |
| Just as with a modern will, probate had to be obtained, that is it had to be proved. This is the authourity to carry out the instructions as written in the will, that is to execute it. The testator normally said who they wanted to be their executor. This is granted by a court which has to be satisfied that the written document is the actual will of the person who has died. | |
| Which Courts proved wills from West Kent up to 1650? | |
|
Most wills in the index were
proved in the Rochester Consistory Court (RCC) which covered the Rochester diocese, or one of
its subsidiary Archdeacons' Courts each of which covered its own Archdeaconry. But some of the
parishes in West Kent were in the Peculiar of Shoreham. A Peculiar was a local court covering a
number of parishes, in the case of the Peculiar of Shoreham, parishes in Middlesex as well as Kent
(only wills for Kent are included in this index).
In theory, if a testator owned property in only one archdeaconry, the will could be proved in the Archdeacon's Court, if in more than one archdeaconry but only one diocese, then in the Consistory Court. If the testator owned property in more than diocese, then the will had to be proved in the Archbishop's Court, in the case of a testator from Kent, the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC). Some of the testators whose wills are included in this index owned land in many parts of the country. Some of the wills proved in the PCC were wills of people who owned property only in their own parish. Here, the executor (or executors) must have decided that they could justify a trip to London with the estate paying their expenses perhaps becuase they thought it would reflect the status of the testator. Sometimes wills were proved locally as, for example, John Blatcher's will in 1582 "in Shipbourne church before me, Nicholas Hooper, curate here, by virtue of a commission to me delivered". | |
| What happened at the proving? | |
| The original will was copied (the register copy) into the probate book which is why, in many cases, there are two copies, the archives holding the original will and also the probate book. Sometimes the "original" has a note on it to say that this was itself a copy of the original which had been returned to the executor. The executors had to pay various costs which are sometimes written on the original will; they usually totalled between ten and eighteen shillings (50p to 90p, possibly enough to buy a cow). | |
| What if there was no will? | |
|
Sometimes a person who was dying, whilst not having time to
have a will written, did manage to make their wishes known to a number of people attending at the
sick bed. After the death, these people would get someone to write down these wishes and would
testify that they were indeed the person's wishes. This nuncupative will was then proved in the
same way as an ordinary will.
Where there was no will at all, but the deceased (who had died intestate) had property or goods of some worth to hand on, an administrator was appointed by the court to handle the estate; the administrator was usually the next of kin over twenty-one and this was often the widow who was called the relict. Sometimes an administrator had to be appointed for other reasons: the executor might have been under twenty-one; although a will existed an executor might not have been specified; occasionally the person appointed executor refused to act. | |
| Where can I find more about early wills? | |
|
See Wills Before 1858 by Eve McLaughlin published by Varneys Press,Rudds Lane, Haddenham, Aylesbury, Bucks, HP17 8JP. | |
| The Will Itself | |
What is generally referred to as "a will", often consisted of two main parts:
John Boardman's will (CKS: Drb/Pw 27) illustrates the usual structure of a will. The spelling has been modernised but there was very often little punctuation and no consistency in the use of capital letters. ":" was used in this will where we would use a full stop.
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